Numerous attempts have been made to design covers for vehicles, including cars, boats and even airplanes, and for structures, such as driveways and parking lots, to protect them from the natural elements. Most of such covers have been designed to protect vehicles and/or pavement from snow and ice and to make it easier to clear accumulated snow/ice from the covered objects.
The major problem with such covers is that the weight of the accumulated snow/ice on the cover often makes it extremely difficult to remove the cover from the protected object so as to clear away the snow/ice.
The present invention is a portable canopy, which can be deployed either on a vehicle or on a paved area. Depending on the amount of tension of its elastic corner straps, the canopy can be deployed in a convex configuration, so as to arch over the cab of a vehicle, or alternatively in a substantially flat configuration, so as to cover a pavement. A series of coil spring strips within the canopy urge it to curl up into a cylindrical roll around its longitudinal axis, so that, when the corner straps are released on one side, that side is lifted by the contraction of the coil strips, thereby expelling accumulated snow/ice to the other side of the vehicle or pavement.